Amazon device farm to test mobile apps, just not Apple apps

AmazonAMZN Web Services which has been beefing up its capabilities for mobile app developers, this week unveiled an online “device farm” that developers can use to check out how their mobile app code will run, at least on Android and Kindle devices. There is no mention of support for popular AppleAAPL iOS apps or for Windows devices.

The promise of Amazon’s device farm is that a developer trying to write an application for Android and FireOS (the operating system used by Amazon Kindle devices) can code it, upload the code AWS, and then test it out in both environments. —actually Amazon evangelist Jeff Barr said it tests across 200 possible configurations.

Mobile apps are the focal point these days and not just for social interaction and play. More enterprise applications are now being developed with a “mobile first” mindset since many workers now view their smartphones and tablets as key tools at work, not just for play.

Amazon’s new way of paying authors makes sense, and here’s why

Amazon has what you might call a tense relationship with the book-publishing community, including authors who believe its platform devalues the act of writing, so it’s not surprising that any change it makes to the way it sells books or pays writers tends to come under heavy fire. Its latest move is no exception: The company is launching a new payment scheme for authors whose books are part of its Netflix-style book-rental program for the Kindle, in which writers will be paid based on how many pages a user reads.

Depending on whom you listen to, this is either the death of writing, an all-out attack on authors, a shameless money grab that will lead to an explosion of shlock, or a combination of all three. But while most authors probably don’t want to admit it, what Amazon AMZNis doing makes a lot of sense—and not just from a business point of view either. Its approach could actually make the market for new books healthier, which would help everyone.

Amazon to pay self-published authors on basis of how many pages are actually read. Because being an unknown writer isn't hard enough already

This new approach doesn’t apply to every author who publishes through Amazon’s Kindle platform, just the ones who are part of the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program, which features self-published titles that are exclusive to the Amazon platform. When one of these books is rented through the Kindle Unlimited or Lending Library programs, authors used to be paid a certain fee for every reader who got past 10% of the book. Now, they will be paid based on the total number of pages that are read by rental users. Here’s how Amazon explained it in its announcement:

The author of a 100 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed and read completely 100 times would earn $2,000 ($10 million multiplied by 20,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

The author of a 200 page book that was borrowed 100 times but only read halfway through on average would earn $1,000 ($10 million multiplied by 10,000 pages for this author divided by 100,000,000 total pages).

Some Amazon supporters have pointed out that famous authors like Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were also paid based on the number of words they produced and the magazines they sold (although at the time no one could tell how many of them were read), but for the most part the company has been criticized for cheapening the art of writing.

But does the change actually do this? Not really. In fact, it arguably incentivizes new authors to create books that readers will like, so that more people will get through as many pages as possible. In the past, all that mattered was the number of rentals.

If you look past all of the criticism, what Amazon is trying to do is what any retailer or middle-man does: It’s trying to figure out the right mix of incentives that will encourage authors to produce what it wants, which is books that sell and that readers enjoy. This may offend writers who don’t want to think of their books as retail products, but it’s a perfectly reasonable approach for Amazon to take. In fact, you could argue that traditional publishers would probably have done the same thing if they could have.

Author Chuck Wendig made a similar point in a blog post on the changes, arguing that the new approach is better in some ways than the model Amazon used to use. The previous system encouraged writers to produce as many books as possible, Wendig says—even if they weren’t very good—in the hope that enough people would rent them that they could get paid. The new model, he argues:

“Fixes the weird inequity and stops punishing people who wrote… y’know, actual-size novels. And it stops incentivizing people to write tiny little no-nothing stories, or for writers to break up actual-size novels into hitching seed-spurts of ‘serial content’ (‘My novel, THE RAMTHONODOX CONSPIRACY, is broken up into 215 downloadable chapters!’)”

Author Kerry Wilkinson, whose series of crime novels made it to the top of the Amazon best-seller list and won him a deal with a traditional publisher, also feels that Amazon’s new approach for Kindle rentals is fair. “If readers give up on a title after half a dozen pages, why should the writer be paid in full?” he asked in an interview with The Telegraph. Others point out that many books are “padded” by writers who feel as though they should be a certain size, something Amazon’s new strategy would discourage.

One of the things some authors seem to be worried about is the potential for Amazon to start paying all Kindle authors in the same way, or for its approach to catch on with other publishers. And it’s certainly possible that Amazon might expand its experiment, if it proves to have the right effect on production of new books. But it’s not entirely clear that this would be a bad thing—either for readers and book buyers, or for authors themselves. Whether writers like it or not, books are a product that consumers pay for, and encouraging better products arguably benefits the entire marketplace.

Follow Mathew Ingram on Twitter at @mathewi. You can read his coverage of the media industry by going here, or you can subscribe via his RSS feed.

Tablet shipments are officially in decline

This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com.

By Victor Luckerson, TIME

The once-booming tablet market has hit some turbulence.

Year-over-year shipments of tablets declined for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to research firm IDC. 76 million of the devices were shipped worldwide during the fourth quarter, down from about 79 million a year prior.

The decline of Apple’s AAPL iPad has been well-documented: The device tumbled 18% in year-over-year unit sales during the fourth quarter and 4% for 2014 overall. But this isn’t just an Apple problem. Sales of Amazon’s AMZN Kindle Fire tablets fell a staggering 70% during the fourth quarter, from 5.8 million during that period in 2013 to 1.7 million in 2014. Samsung tablet sales also fell 18%, from 13.5 million to 11 million.

The shift away from tablets can likely be blamed in part on the growing size of smartphones: Owning a bigger smartphone means you might have less need for a tablet. Apple just had its most successful quarter ever largely thanks to blockbuster sales for its jumbo-sized iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. People also tend to hold on to their tablets longer than their phones, at least in the U.S., because tablets are generally not subsidized by wireless carriers.

Despite recent trends, overall tablet shipments in 2014 did manage to grow slightly from 2013, climbing 4% from 220 million to 230 million. IDC projects that shipments will increase again in 2015 thanks to new devices running Windows 10 and the growing popularity of large tablets with screen sizes topping 10 inches.

Amazon exec: We priced the Fire phone wrong

When it introduced the Fire smartphone in July, Amazon bet sales would be something worth bragging about. But three months in, it’s obvious the Fire phone is more dud than runaway success.

Last week, Amazon CTO Tom Szkutak disclosed as much by saying the company took a $170 million charge, mostly associated with the Fire phone and related supplier costs. He also acknowledged that the company had a huge surplus of $83 million worth of unsold phones collecting dust somewhere.

In an interview with Fortune, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices David Limp acknowledged Amazon bumbled the phone’s pricing. Traditionally, Amazon AMZN undercuts the competition on hardware, pairing lower prices and solid features. But with the Fire phone, Amazon stuck to standard industry pricing, asking $199 for the 32 gigabyte model and $299 for the 64 gigabyte. On that front, Amazon, well, misfired.

“We didn’t get the price right,” Limp admitted. “I think people come to expect a great value, and we sort of mismatched expectations. We thought we had it right. But we’re also willing to say, ‘we missed.’ And so we corrected.”

In September, the company slashed the Fire phone’s price from $199 to 99 cents, a steep discount Limp said yielded significantly better sales. He also pointed out that two software updates since the Fire Phone’s launch ironed out some problems customers were having with the device.

Still, $83 million of unsold phones is a lot, even for a tech giant like Amazon. And a visit to the Fire phone’s page on Amazon.com reveals a 2-star customer rating; reviews call out issues like the Fire phone running hot and a small selection of apps.

Some analysts like Mark Mahaney, Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets, contend it’s “too late” for Amazon to salvage the Fire phone, but Limp claims Amazon isn’t yanking support any time soon.

“When you’re taking risks, they’re not all going to pay off,” said Limp. “Those are the facts.” Limp pointed out other Amazon devices, like its Fire tablet line and Fire TV streaming box, that he described as being “very successful” with customers, but he declined to discuss sales numbers.

With the Fire phone, Amazon plans to stay the course, as it has with its Kindle readers. As CEO Jeff Bezos likes to point out, critics panned the first Kindle e-reader in 2007, but it evolved into a widely-used family of products. Likewise, Amazon seems intent on taking the same long-term approach with the Fire phone, despite a competitive smartphone market.

“We are going to keep iterating software features to get it better and better,” said Limp. “Each release that we’re doing, we’re learning. Beyond that, I leave it out there to see what people think.”

Heavy growth puts drag on Amazon’s bottom line

Amazon reported a disappointing third quarter on Thursday in the period leading up to holiday season. Investors responded by pummeling the stock in after-hours trading, driving it down 10% to $280 a share. Here are the key points from the earnings report.

What you need to know: Amazon traditionally funnels much of its profits into expanding its already gargantuan business, resulting in razor-thin margins — and this quarter proved no different. The e-commerce giant reported a $437 million loss on revenues of $20.58 billion, a 20% revenue increase year-over-year, but well below Wall Street’s estimate of $20.84 billion.

A significant chunk of that money went into content and technology — a spending area that jumped 40%. That’s unsurprising given Amazon’s announcement last quarter that it would spend over $100 million on original video content, including the well-received original TV show, “Transparent” with “Arrested Development” actor Jeffrey Tambor.

The big numbers: $27.3 billion and $30.3 billion. That’s the sales range Amazon expects for this holiday season, the company’s busiest time of the year. That represents growth of between 7% and 18% versus last year, but again, less than what analysts forecast.

What you might have missed: Amazon AMZN had an extremely busy summer. It acquired Twitch, the video-game streaming site, for $1.1 billion, unveiled a credit card reader for the smartphone called Amazon Local Register and brought its same-day grocery delivery service, Amazon Prime Fresh, to New York. Amazon also launched the Fire phone, which is widely believed to be a dud. On Thursday’s earnings call, CFO Tom Szutak suggested it was too early to call the Fire phone a failure given its launch just 90 days ago. Said Szutak: “When ever you launch something new, there’s a wide range of outcomes, but it’s also early.”

With new tablets and e-readers, Amazon smolders

The Amazon product manager, tall and wide-eyed with a crooked smile more disarming than devious, lifted the tablet computer up to the level of his chin. “It’s 20% lighter than the iPad Air,” he said, lightly bobbing it with one hand gripping its beveled black bezel. It certainly was light, though calling it featherweight would be a stretch. You could see by the way the muscles in his forearm flexed that it still had a little bit of heft. I confirmed my suspicion when I repeated the motion myself.

It’s a good-looking object, this tablet, with its magnesium shell and angles that recall a hand-drawn Optimus Prime. It ought to be. As Amazon’s newest flagship model, dubbed the Fire HDX and measuring 8.9 inches from opposing corners, its sole mission is to, like a heat-seeking missile screaming across the desert sky, take out Apple’s formidable iPad, which by timing (first) and technology (slick) remains the dominant force in the category. The pricey iPad is so ubiquitous that some people use the brand name interchangeably with the term tablet, like “Band-Aid.” Good for Apple, less so for Amazon.

On Wednesday night, the Seattle-based company AMZN announced a number of new products intended to get the jump on the holiday season and, perhaps for only a moment, capture attention before its Cupertino, Calif.-based rival AAPL seizes it once more. Among them are a compact, sophisticated flagship e-reader called the Kindle Voyage ($199); a redesigned, touch-enabled economy e-reader called simply Kindle ($79); an entry-level tablet computer in two sizes and five colors called Fire HD ($99 to $139); and a children’s tablet computer with a bulbous, Shrek-like rubber case called Fire HD Kids Edition ($149 to $189) that, to the expected delight of stressed parents and caretakers everywhere, comes with a novel two-year warranty stipulating that Amazon will replace a broken tablet for free, no questions asked.

Amazon’s Fire HDX 8.9 tablet computer.

Yet it is the $379 Fire HDX, with its high-resolution (339 pixels per inch, if you must know) display and dynamic light control (so as to tint the digital display to match the warmth of a real piece of paper), where Amazon’s success will be measured. Though its latest advances in its classic e-readers are admirable, it already controls the category. (Sorry, Samsung.) And cheap economy tablets, which are now sold in pharmacies among other places, are no way to win the category profitably. (Not that the company ever looked to turn a profit on hardware in the first place. “Our business model is to price them at cost and make money during their use,” another product manager told me, plainly.) With the Fire HDX, Amazon goes head to head with the most wealthy technology company on the planet.

Which may be why the company’s employees, stationed all around the intimate penthouse level of the Milk Studios on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in New York’s chic Chelsea neighborhood, couldn’t help but reference It That Shall Not Be Named. “It’s got a million more pixels than iPad Air,” the first product manager said of the Fire HDX. Later, as he demonstrated its dynamic light feature, he added: “When you look at the iPad, it’s a little blue—a little unnatural.” Another Amazon employee, describing the availability of features in the latest version of the company’s Fire mobile operating system (version 4, known as “Sangria”), took a more subtle dig: “Most of our best features are available across ecosystems. We don’t like to lock our stuff in.” Message received.

There is a lot riding on these devices, which can be ordered immediately and will ship in early October. The company’s most ambitious shot across Apple’s bow to date, its Fire phone, was received poorly despite a great deal of anticipation. Mere months after its June introduction, the device is selling for a pittance, an uncharacteristically public misstep for a company that has proven skilled at hiding failure.

Amazon’s new Kindle Voyage e-reader.Courtesy: Amazon.com

The new crop of tablets and e-readers seem to be on more stable footing. The Kindle Voyage e-reader is confidently engineered, with a flush, glare-resistant display (courtesy of a process it calls “micro-etching”) and bezel sensors that, when pressed, vibrate pleasantly to “turn” the page. It’s clearly the kind of unobtrusive device you’d want to have on hand during a nonstop flight to Hong Kong. The Fire HD tablets were hardy and unflappable. Meanwhile, the Fire HDX was smooth and jitter-free as I swiped through menus and applications and watched a scene from—you guessed it—the big-budget film Transformers. Among other things, Amazon’s new tablets come with free, unlimited cloud storage for photos. The service, relegated to a single bullet point during its presentation, may be the company’s most aggressive feature of all. (“This iPad cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available” nightmares abound.)

It is interesting that Amazon sought to introduce its new devices in such a quiet way, seated among handfuls of under-caffeinated reporters perched on low-slung couches in a room decorated, rumor has it, by Amazon expressly for the occasion. (Objets d’art: wine glasses, the late 1970s electronic game Simon, a jar of jelly beans, a miniature Roy Lichtenstein print, a book about military aircraft called Fighter: Technology, Facts, History.) Perhaps it still felt burned from the high-wattage introduction of the faltering Fire phone. Or maybe, a month before Apple is expected to introduce its own new tablet computers, it didn’t want to invite comparison.

Amazon unveils e-book subscription service . . . for real this time

After teasing the news earlier this week, Amazon has finally revealed the details for its new e-book subscription service, Kindle Unlimited.

The online retail giant said Friday that it is now offering users a $9.99 monthly membership that gives them access to more than 600,000 e-book titles. The service, which also applies to more than 2,000 audiobooks is compatible with Kindles and apps can be downloaded on other companies’ devices including iPhones and iPads along with Android, Windows and Blackberry devices.

Previously, Amazon has offered e-book rentals with Amazon Prime membership, but that service only allows for one rental each month and it only works with Amazon devices. (While there will be no limit to how long members hold onto an e-book rental, Mashable reports that it was told by Amazon that users can only hold onto 10 digital books at a time.)

Reports surfaced earlier this week that Amazon AMZN was testing the Netflix-style e-book rental service, with ads for Kindle Unlimited appearing briefly on the company’s website Wednesday before disappearing.

Amazon noted Friday that the service will cover such best-selling titles as “The Hunger Games” and “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, among others. However, most large publishers haven’t signed on to the service, making many new and popular titles unavailable. The New York Timesreports that both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster have confirmed that their titles are not part of the new Amazon service.

Considering the limited number of books available, some early reviews of Kindle Unlimited wonder if it is worth the price. Amazon also faces competition from existing services such as Scribd and Oyster that have similar offerings at slightly lower prices. Oyster offers more than 500,000 digital books at $9.95 per month, while Scribd has roughly 400,000 titles for $8.99 per month. Oyster and Scribd also include titles from both HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster.

Amazon’s new way to boost Kindle sales? Your old books

Jeff Bezos may be tight-lipped when it comes to talking numbers, but the Amazon AMZN chief executive made it clear where the real value of the Kindle lies for his company: “We want to make money when people use our devices — not when people buy our devices,” he wrote to shareholders in April.

That’s where MatchBook comes in. The service beefs up Kindle offerings by bundling print and e-book purchases at a discount. Since Oct. 29, customers can download Kindle versions of print books they bought on Amazon dating all the way back to 1995 for $2.99 or less — in some cases even getting them for free.

MatchBook is part of Amazon’s larger strategy to rope in loyal customers by adding perks to existing purchases. “They keep the price the same and add a lot more services to your subscription,” says Oliver Wintermantel, an analyst forISI Group. Matchbook is similar to AutoRip, launched by Amazon at the start of the year, which lets customers stream free MP3 versions of vinyls or CDs they’ve purchased. Amazon Prime also follows this give-them-more-than-they-signed-up-for strategy, offering perks like free movie streaming to members who originally signed up for only free shipping. “It creates loyalty to the retailer,” Wintermantel says.

Amazon isn’t breaking new ground here. The concept of bundling print and e-books has been around since e-books came on the market. O’Reilly Media, which focuses on technology books, has been offering such bundles for years. But when a big player like Amazon jumps in the game, it’s a different story. A recent MatchBook search on Amazon brought up more than 96,000 results — a tiny fraction of its total listed titles, yet far more than any other bookseller out there.

But why would customers want the e-book version of a book they already own, and vice-versa?

“Data has suggested that people don’t do a complete switch over. People who read e-books also read print books,” says Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Company, a publishing consulting firm. “There’s a market for people who want the print and e-book, but aren’t willing to pay the full price for both.”

According to Amazon, bundling print and digital books has been one of the most frequently requested features by customers.

From a business perspective, the move gives Amazon a clear competitive advantage. Let’s say you bought Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible on Amazon as a gift for your mom four years ago, and now you want to read it on your tablet. You could buy the book on iTunes for $11.99, but because you already purchased a print copy, you can download a Kindle version for $2.99. For $1.23 more than the iTunes price, you can get both the print and e-book on Amazon.

AutoRip increased Amazon’s vinyl sales by 66 percent since it launched at the start of the year. For Matchbook, however, the limited selection of titles offered and relatively low number of readers interested in both print and e-books likely won’t move the needle much on sales, Shatzkin says.

Though publishers and booksellers tend to get into a huff anytime Amazon does something to change the direction of the book selling industry, the new service may be good for print book sales, encouraging customers who might not have considered buying a print book to get one along with the electronic version. It is still unclear how authors will fare in terms of royalties.

Many publishers are hesitant to join, but the service could help them sell more books, saysDavid Wilk, owner of book marketing and consulting firm Booktrix. For example, publishers could give new life to a backlist title by offering an e-book version for a lower price. “Why not support the retailer who is going to increase your business?” Wilk asks.

Publishers and authors can think of quite a few reasons. Some worry they could devalue their product by having it sold at a lower price on Amazon. There’s also a hesitancy to give Amazon too much control over titles, which is what Mark Coker, founder of the e-book publishing and distribution platform Smashwords, refers to as a “crush, kill, control strategy.”

Bezos maintains that Amazon’s energy “comes from the desire to impress customers, rather than the zeal to best competitors,” as he told shareholders in April. But if you’re every other bookseller out there, it’s hard not to feel bested.

Inside Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HDX with Jeff Bezos

“People want one device that allows them to do their job and is their entertainment device,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “They don’t want to carry one for their job and entertainment consumption.” Source: Amazon

FORTUNE — Inside a small conference room at Amazon headquarters, Jeff Bezos is briskly writing on a dry erase board in black marker. The 49-year-old CEO is spelling out the three parts of his device strategy, which is behind a new line of tablets Amazon AMZN is announcing this week: the 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX and a redesigned 7-inch Kindle Fire HD. When preorders start this week via Amazon.com, all three will be competitively priced. The 7-inch HDX will sell for $229, an 8.9-inch version for $379, and the HD will go for $139.

“A third leg of our vision and strategy for the device business is going to come into focus today, especially when I show you one particular feature,” says Bezos with a gleam in his eye.

These new Kindles obey the first two laws of the Bezos philosophy — that premium products should be sold at non-premium prices and that Amazon should make money when people use its devices, not when people buy them. Pricing of the Fire HDX matches that of Google’s GOOG Nexus 7 and 10, but neither Android tablet quite sports the industrial design of Amazon’s. They’re also edged out when it comes to features, thanks to the HDX models’ faster quad-core 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor and dual-core Adreno 330 graphics chip.

The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire is light, but also pretty svelte. Source: JP Mangalindan/Fortune.com

The 7-inch HDX has a 720p front-facing camera, but no rear camera, and a pixel resolution of 1,920 by 1,200; the 8.9-incher adds an 8-megapixel rear camera with flash and a pixel resolution of 2,560 by 1,600. Both include 16 gigabytes of built-in storage to start and come sheathed in a jet-black magnesium unibody chassis that’s up to 34% lighter and 14% thinner than last year’s models. Amazon claims the tablets will run for 11 hours between charges and as long as 17 hours if users only read e-books. That’s thanks to a new, low-power mode that cuts down on chip usage during light tasks. 4G models running on AT&T T and Verizon VZ will also become available by December.

When I grip both of the HDX models, I’m surprised at how light they are. The 8.9-inch HDX weighs 0.8 lbs, less than the 10-inch iPad, which weighs significantly more at 1.44 lbs. Frankly, it’s the first tablet over 7 inches I could imagine comfortably holding for long stints.

The revamped Fire HD also warrants attention. Just as Apple AAPL took many of the iPhone 5’s components and wrapped them up in the 5c’s “unapologetically plastic,” candy-colored body, the Fire HD takes the same 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and 1,280 by 800 resolution display in last year’s high-end model, repackages them in a soft-coated, plastic chassis resembling this year’s HDX, and sells it for $139. (To compare, this year’s Kindle Paperwhite e-reader is being sold for just $20 less.)

Yes, it’s last year’s technology all gussied up for another pass but at an even lower price point few competitors dare go. It’s a play for the lower end of the price range, where Bezos says people are more inclined to buy both an affordably priced tablet and an e-reader. “What we’ve found is we take heavy e-book buyers who are also tablet users, not just Kindle Fire tablet users … and we show them the Kindle Paperwhite for the first time, we can’t get it back from their hands,” he explains.

This brings Bezos to his third principle, a venn diagram where “customer delight” and “deep integration” overlap. He is keen to show off the improved software operating system– dubbed Fire OS 3.0 “Mojito,” using Google Android 4.2.2 Jelly bean as the underpinnings — and how the latest Kindle Fire experience marries hardware and software services.

A new 24/7 tech support feature called Mayday lets users have face-to-face video chats with employees and even lets employees control the device. Source: Amazon

Enter Mayday, a new, free 24/7 tech support service available over Wi-Fi for HDX owners. Bezos gets excited as he taps a virtual button on his demo unit, and voila: In seconds, a tech support employee named Dylan pops up in a small video chat window. Not only can employees offer virtual face-to-face advice on how to use a certain tablet feature, they can actually control the tablet, too, drawing arrows to menu options, even doing things like upping or dimming brightness at the users’ request. “It’s both the hardest to do and coolest you can do,” Bezos says from a technological standpoint. He expects Mayday to be particularly popular initially as users show it off to their friends.

When the Kindle Fire first launched, its software was criticized for being limited and occasionally sluggish. It essentially was a mono-tasking device. That’s less so the case this year. Fire OS 3.0 includes a new multitasking feature called Quickswitch. Users pull up the pane by swiping up from the bottom edge of the screen. A row of open apps, publications, and books appear. They can then scroll through and select what they want. The transition is instant.

Other software tweaks include a beefed-up version of X-Ray. Once limited to books, the feature now takes advantage of Amazon’s ownership of the movie database IMDB and lets Kindle owners discover say, which actors are in a particular movie they’ve rented or purchased, or which song is playing in the background of a particular scene. The other, called “second screen,” basically leverages a device like a PlayStation 3 loaded with Amazon Instant Video software attached to a TV, and turns the tablet into a similar console. Users can check out additional information about what they’re watching and control video playback.

A Fire OS update due later this year, dubbed 3.1, seems aimed at the enterprise, including compatibility with IT protocols and a more mature email app with features like threaded messaging. “People want one device that allows them to do their job and is their entertainment device,” says Bezos. “They don’t want to carry one for their job and entertainment consumption.”

Clearly, Bezos hopes his company’s bolder design, ever-aggressive pricing, and new features like Mayday will be enough to entice customers into making the HDX their tablet of choice.

Bringing up the rear: A look at the jet-black magnesium back of the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX. Source: JP Mangalindan/Fortune.comAmazon will also sell two types of cases in different colors for the Kindle Fire HDX made of polyurethane or leather. The Origami cover, as it’s called, folds at least two different ways so the tablet can stand vertically or horizontally. Source: Amazon